Scrolling through my photos on my phone, I came across some I’d taken of the cards I made for Christmas (now last year). As they’ve all been sent, received and recycled, I can share them here. Featuring a ‘stained glass’ design, the tag is removable and designed to be kept and used year-to-year. Making notes follow…

Prototyping

I knew that I wanted to make a stained glass tag, so did some rummaging on Google and found a suitable design, bought the file and then adapted it (added the star and more rays). Next, I planned to save time by cutting the tags and scoring the vinyl ‘leading’ on the laser at the same time. I purchased laser-safe PVC-free vinyl and did some test runs. Oh dear. It didn’t work out well – turns out the vinyl is laminated, black on a white core was an issue and delamination whilst weeding was also a nightmare:

Back to the drawing board. I ended up cutting the acrylic on the laser and conventional vinyl on the Silhouette Cameo, weeding and pairing each up by hand. Forty-five times.

Then it was time to trial the paints. I had in mind to use glass paints, but these turned out to be too translucent and showed up all the brushstrokes. I think solvent-based paints would have perhaps worked better/flowed more easily than my water-based ones, but I didn’t have any to hand. I ended up using two layers of stencilled multi-surface acrylics to get the coverage I wanted.

Mass production

Next, I adjusted the cut file to create a stencil for each colour and laser cut them from 190µ Mylar. They are cut to fit the tag so that lining up was easy. The edges between colours were hidden behind the vinyl ‘leading’ on the front.

By the time I had stencilled paint onto the reverse of 45 tags using a foam dabber, the ones at the beginning were dry enough to do a second coat.

After everything was thoroughly dry, I added a couple of coats of clear spray varnish to help prevent scratches to the paint layer…

… before adding metallic gold elastic hangers to each of the tags:

The card itself

The tag was intended to be removed from the card and hung up somewhere. I found some removable glue dots from online – they were a little too tacky, but I had to go with them in the absence of finding something more suitable. I wanted the card to still have something on it once the tag was removed, so laser-cut a bespoke stamp with the same outline and stamped it on the card front – it worked as a placement for the tag as well.

The elastic hanger could be removed for posting purposes – the knot thickness added to the acrylic ended up being more than the 5mm small letter thickness, but unthreaded it was fine. The card size was A6.

Learning points

• Always, always, always prototype and test all the materials you plan to use in advance
• Find ways to speed up production wherever possible
• Take account of drying times when planning production
• Know how many cards you need at the outset

Last words

If you’d like to commission similarly unique, handcrafted Christmas cards, then please let me know. I love the whole process from idea to design, prototype to production and ending with delight expressed by recipients.